Monday, February 14, 2011

Tonight is the first of three nights of epic Jeopardy! competition. Watson, IBM's artificial intelligence computer, who has spent the last seven years training for this week, will take on Jeopardy! champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a charity AI-human intelligence show-down.

[The anti-Watson? An early IBM portable PC.]

According to Slate, "Science" is among the top ten categories used in Jeopardy! over roughly the last 10 years. Thanks to the online Jeopardy! fan clue archive - J! Archive - here's a list of some of the physics-relation questions Jeopardy! guests have encountered over the last decade. Think you can get them all right? How about Watson? The answers will be posted tomorrow.

Jeopardy! Round:($100)A sound's repetition by reflection.($200)Detection of gamma rays was 1 of the uses for this 1947 instant picture taker.($300)After length, width & depth, the 4th dimension.($400)Negative particle that orbits an atom's nucleus.($500)Shattering sound that accompanies breaking the sound barrier.Double Jeopardy! Round: ($200)What we call the flow of electrons through wire, air, or even yourself.($400)In light, 2 colors are said to be complementary if, when added together, they produce this color.($600)Though it holds our planet together, it's actually a much weaker force than electro-magnetism.($800)Invented in 1947 to improve electron microscope images, this science created a 3-D picture.($1000)Branch of physics dealing with motion, like the bumping of molecules in a gas.

Double Jeopardy! Bonus Round (Why not?): ($400)In the late 19th century, scientists postulated that this travels in waves through what they called luminiferous ether.($800) A 1992 experiment using surface tension on polished silicon got water to defy physics by doing this.($1200)The second law of thermodynamics says that this will of its own accord only move to a colder object.($1600)When you press the nozzle of an aerosol can...the contents are pushed out by pressurized gas. The gas is called one of these, a general term for chemicals that create thrust.($2000)Newton said the gravitational force between 2 objects is inversely related to the square of this measurement.

Final Jeopardy! Round:Edward Lorenz' idea of linking this creature to changes in the weather became the basis of chaos theory.